Chapter Fifteen: "Memories."
TEN MINUTES later, I'm excusing myself from the table and making my way to the door. Landon said that he'd show me after dinner, and that was the end of the dinner talk.
The air is a little cool, so I wrap my arms around myself before rubbing them to produce friction. Once satisfied, I drop my arms just in time to see Landon emerge from the house behind me.
"Shall we?" He says, directing me towards the few barns laid throughout the piece of land.
"Yes." I breathe out.
Landon nods, and I follow him as we near the first barn, a typical red barn with a triangle-shaped top. It's the biggest barn on the property, and a sudden burst of excitement and anxiousness floods through me.
I lived in the suburbs of LA, so I wasn't around. . . animals bigger than dogs. All I really seen were the marine animals that I scuba dived with, and on land, anywhere from snakes to turtles, and hamsters to Great Dane's and St. Bernard's. And plus, I had no relatives that owned farms with animals that had more than horses. So really, I'm excited to see what Landon's family has to offer behind those wooden red doors.
"You ever been to a farm before?" Landon asks me, slowing his pace down to walk with me.
I glance around, seeing the sun starting to set and I can't help but feel chills run down my spine as the shadows of the forests grow darker and eerie as the day ends. I have to admit, it makes sense on why Lucas can't come out after sunset. It's creepy as hell.
"My aunt owns a ranch down in Tennessee, but I don't see them as much as I used to." I answer, keeping my eyes trained on my feet as we begin walking through mud patches.
I picked a bad place to wear fifty dollar boots to.
"So you have some experience with work?" He asks, mirth laced around his words.
I raise an eyebrow. "What's that supposed to mean?"
Landon shrugs, tossing his hands in his pockets, and looks up at the sky, where stars are starting to become very faintly visible. "I don't know, I just figured that, you know, since you're from Los Angeles that you wouldn't know what farming is. Let alone know anything about it."
I laugh, but I can't disagree. I really know next to nothing about farmland. Back home we didn't have a lot of mud unless it rained in grassy areas, but even then, it was simply wet dirt and not. . . poop.
Farming sounds like a lot of work and includes a lot of messes. I'm not a neat freak, but I'd much rather stay clean than play in the mud.
Speaking of mud, I wonder what mushiness I am exactly stepping in and how much it'll cost to have my ankle boots cleaned.
"Well aren't you one to judge." I point out teasingly, which gets a small chuckle and shrug from Landon. "But, I guess you're right, in a way." I answer honestly, "I mean, I know some things, like, to never touch a fence that has wires on it, or to not walk behind a horse without making sure it acknowledges your presence first so you don't get a strong foot kicked to your chestâor in my case, face. But yeah, other than that, I know nothing."
"Well, you'll need some lessons then, Blue." He says giddily, and stops in front of the big doors.
I stop beside him as he unlocks it. "What do you mean?" I question warily.
Though it's starting to grow dark, Landon's smirk shines like the sun in a sea of blackness. "You don't think you'll be living here without doing chores of some sort, do you?"
"No, but I didn't expect it would have anything to do with gross, smelly animals." I say with a scrunched up nose, thinking of the possibilities of how awful these things will actually smell like. From outside, it's not bad because you have the scent of the trees and water, but I'm sure inside would be a totally different matter.
"Oh dear Blue, you have a lot of learning to do." He says with a shake to his head, and then heaves open the barn doors.
Immediately I'm flooded with the awful smell of manure and hay. It smells a lot worse than Aunt Cindy's ranch, but then again, she only owned horses. I bring my hand up to my nose and plug it with my fingers, trying not to hurl.
Landon starts laughing. "Come on, it's not that bad. Just wait until we get to the pigs."
My eyes widen. Yup. Aunt Cindy definitely doesn't own pigs. "Pigs?"
"Yeah, pigs. Y'know, they make an oink oink soundâ"
"I know what a fucking pig is, I'm not stupid." I snap.
"Well sorry. You never even seen a bear before, so what was Iâ"
"Not judge." I interrupt hastily. "You're supposed to not judge. I'm sorry that I live with celebrities and not in the middle of nowhere with four-legged animals that smell worse than the shit that comes out of my Uncle Pedro's ass on Taco Tuesday."
As much as I appreciate Landon and some of his relatives, I'm not underestimating how pissed off it makes me when people make assumptions of people they don't know. Out of the time between last year and now, I've gone through a lot of mood changes, and up until I found out I was being shipped off to Hockey-crazed people, I was weak.
I took everyone's words to heartâregardless of how many times I'm told to ignore it or that I convince myself that they don't matter. Opinions to me matterâand I thought that the words people would call me, like what Stacy and her rats do, all I think about is that that is their opinion on how I look like, how I act, and how I am. That that is what they see me as: fat, bulimic, and a wimp.
Then I went to prison, and those walls that were built from what happened last year, came up again and people's words didn't bother me. Things that happened behind those bars brought out some of the bad parts of me that I tried to forget, and others that left permanent images stuck to my brains memory like gum at the bottom of your shoe.
Hearing people make assumptions and call me names used to make me cry and feel whatever they called me. Example, I used to throw up because I was being called fat and ate too much. Now, after what happened with Emily and her crew in the pen, it does nothing but agitate me and piss me off.
And the last thing I need is to be kicked out of Ella's house because I was violent.
"Wow, okay, sorry. Just calm down, would you?" He throws his hands up, surrendering and walking into the building. It's pitch black, but everything brightens when he flicks a switch to my right.
The first thing I notice is that the room is long and narrow. There's many horse stalls to my right, all covered by light wood and doors with bars on them, making the stalls more like a room. After passing all the stallsâthat are emptyâthere's a little attachment that has just some more horse things. I watch my step as we walk silently further into the barn, since there's faint marks of piss and shit sprawled around the floor.
Gross.
"This is where we keep our riding horses," Landon explains. I nod, and continue making my way around.
On the left is a whole bunch of equipment, and the only recognizable thing I see are the horse reins and saddles.
I walk further to the back, where there's another room, stairs to my left, and a little workshop, room, and hallway leading to some other place to my right.
"What's back there?" I ask Landon, as he turns right instead of going to the room in front of us.
He stops walking. "Nothing," he replies hesitantly. "Just storage."
I nod, not pressing anything further. He turns to the right, and it's a small hallway. As we get closer, there's another hallway that leads to the other side of the horse's stalls, and a few buckets are laying on the ground, a hose inside two of them. To my left is another pen, but it's much larger than the stalls, about three of them combined. Ahead, is a small door that leads to another door, which I assume is to lead outside to the fields that the horses are held.
"This part here is where we keep our mares for breeding." Landon says, pointing to the bigger pen. "Here, follow me." I oblige and follow him through the gate. He locks it behind me and on the other side, I see another pen for horses, and a door split into two: an upper half and bottom half.
"If I walk through that door, I'm not going to see two horses going at it, am I?" With raised eyebrows and a scrunched up face, I visibly gag at the thought and start to feel what little dinner I had come up from my stomach.
Landon smirks, a chuckle escaping, "Is that something you want?"
My face drops, and I probably blush. Stupid, stupid hormonal boys! God, I wanna go home. Abort tour, abort tour! "Nâno?"
Shit.
"If you want some action, you could have just asked, Blue. I wouldn't mind."
Okay, why is he flirting? No, why is he flirting with me? Nobody flirts with me but my friends, but even then, they're just doing it playfully, and have no meaning to it. Is that what I'm supposed to be doing right now? Just pretend he's just kidding, because that's what we're doing, right? He's just playing with me.
Right?
The blush deepens, definitely. "Unlike you, I like staying away from STD's."
"Whoever said I have any STD's? Listen, sweetheart, my brother's get around just as much as I do; probably more. Don't listen to them."
"So what makes you think I should listen to anything you say then? You're no better." I scoff.
It's a double standard, but he's probably too dumb and panty-infested to notice.
"Never said that, either, honey." He grins.
"Oh my God. Why am I even here? Why did I agree to this?" I smack my hands over my face, running them from my forehead to my neck.
Seriously. One mistake. One mistake and my whole damn life changes. One wrong decision and I end up in the scariest position ever, and now it's guaranteed to haunt me forever.
I shouldn't have said yes.
"You said you wanted a tour of the barns. And you're here because you said you were forced to." Landon answers, then clicks his tongue and shakes his head. "I thought you would know that, Blue."
"My name isn't Blue," I groan. "It's Brooklyn! And how did you know what I said?"
Landon sighs. "You weren't listening to anything at the dinner table, were you?"
"I was," I protest.
"Then you would have remembered that last night, I said I was learning Spanish." He tells me, mirth in his voice, even though I have no idea why it'd be so amusing.
Damn, I forgot he said he was learning Spanish. Well, Brooklyn, that's one person who will more than likely understand what you're saying instead of nobody.
Well, whenever I get drunk I guess now he'll know what I say.
Damn.
"Right." I hiss, cursing myself. For someone who literally listens to everyone, I'm doing a pretty crap job. "What are you learning it for, anyway?"
"I had a girlfriend who moved here from Columbia, so I kinda needed to learn it to understand her. Then I took these Spanish classes to know it better."
So Landon has a pretty fair idea on what I say? Why didn't he say anything before? Well, I guess he did last night, right? Eugh, so much and Day 2 is almost done.
But then a thought occurs to me.
Landon actually dated? Like, commitment and all? For someone who apparently gets around a lot, I'm surprised he was faithful.
Or was he?
"You had a girlfriend?"
Landon smirks, but shrugs. "I was twelve. That was before puberty and I knew what else girls could give me." He winks.
"Gross." I shiver. "In that case, just open the damn door before I puke."
"Like I said, learning." He opens the door nonetheless, and it just leads us to the fields.
But there's nothing out here.
"Is there a purpose to this?" I ask confusedly. Why would he just bring us outside to nothingness? I thought the reason I wanted to get shown around was because of the animals.
Or it's because you don't want Ella and her family knowing why you weren't home all year, my mind says.
I sigh.
"Step about five feet in front of you, and wave." He tells me, gesturing to further into the fields. I remain still. For all I know, there could be a trapdoor there and I'll fall thirty feet to my death. Landon notices and groans. "Jesus Christ, stop being such a pussy. Nothing is going to come out and eat you. The bears won't come near here."
"I'm not worried about bears," I point out. "I'm worried about you tricking me and there actually being hidden trapdoors that will consume me into the ground and have me die a horrible death."
In the darkness, I see Landon roll his eyes. "If that were the case, I'd rather of tortured you firsthand. There's nothing secretive out here. You think we'd let our horses out here if there was a chance they could break a bone getting caught in the crevices? Tsk, I thought you knew better, Blue."
I don't reply, and instead scowl and head out the five feet ahead of me. He has a point; Aunt Cindy wouldn't let our riders out if there were secret traps that could cause harm to them. Not only would it hurt the horses, but the vet bill would be ginormous.
I wave my hand out to literally nothing, and I start to grow mad when I think that Landon could have done that just to have me make a fool out of myself. So when I turn around to glare at him and yell, I see that his face is turned to where I was supposed to wave, and he has a content look on his face. Then instead of the smirk, I see a smile form.
Curious and confused, I turn around again and where there was once nothing, is now about ten huge horses right in front of me.
I gasp, startled a little bit, but I calm down and smile to myself. It's been a long time since I seen a horse, and it makes me feel relaxed. It reminds me of the time where I'd stay the summer with my Aunt and take care of the horses.
It reminds me of when my life was good and not crumbling.
I can't see through the darkness, but a larger oneâone of the largest I'd sayâcomes storming up to me. Out of reflex, my arm reaches up and rubs the side of his halter, the other rubbing his nose. All the other horses swarm me, but I'm not worried about it. This is a feeling I missed; I just never realized just how much I missed it. I watch my toes as I give each and every one attention, and I feel some tears prickle at my eyes. I miss my old life so much, and there's nothing I can do to normalize it again.
It's over.
I angrily wipe the tears away, blaming Taylor for ruining my life, happiness, and everything that happened in eighth and ninth grade that lead me to where I am right now.
I hear some clicking, and the horses scatter away, leaving me alone in the center of the field.
"Still think I'm tricking you?" I hear him ask from behind me, but I'm too drowned in my thoughts to notice his presence until he's right in front of me. "Blue? Blue, are you crying?"
That seemed to get me out of my thoughts as I widen my eyes and act like nothing just happened and I didn't just have a trip down Memory Lane. "No, I believe you weren't tricking me."
Then I walk off. I've enough for one night.